American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
In 1820, Franz Schubert began writing out a four-movement string quartet. He composed a gorgeous nine minute opening, then got sidetracked and never finished the piece. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear that abandoned movement from a recent concert in Schenectady, New York.
Each week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer. Then, one of our listeners calls in and tries to guess two things: the tune, and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking. Play along with our weekly musical game, on Wednesday's Performance Today.
Conductor Jeffrey Kahane loves Britten's Variations on a theme by Frank Bridge. He says that it's simultaneously majestic, mysterious, sentimental, hilarious, heartbreaking, dazzlingly cerebral, and in the end, profound. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear it from a concert in Los Angeles.
Composer Alberto Ginastera was born one hundred years ago today. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll say feliz cumpleaños to the great Argentine composer, and we'll hear pianist Joyce Yang play his Argentine Dances in concert in Aspen.
Violinist Ani Kavafian loves Aram Khachaturian's Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano. On this weekend's Performance Today she'll introduce it, and play it with a couple of friends at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Gabriel Kahane is a composer of music who thinks an awful lot like a writer of literature. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll explore his song cycle, The Fiction Issue, and Kahane will join us to discuss his inspiration for these musical short stories.
Ani Kavafian had the opportunity to play one of Arno Babajanian's trios with the composer himself, and she came away with some secrets. On Thursday's Performance Today, Kavafian will join Fred to share a few of those secrets as well as music by Babajanian.
Violinist Ani Kavafian loves Aram Khachaturian's Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano. On Wednesday's Performance Today she'll introduce it, and play it with a couple of friends at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
It's an enduring musical question: is it okay to dance to Johann Sebastian Bach? American violinist Rachel Barton Pine says yes. On Tuesday's Performance Today, she'll join Fred in the studio to explain her rationale, and to play dance music by Bach.
